Reversals of Fortune in Berlin and Vienna

Could the "apocalyptic tone" of the current "rhetoric of emergency" get out of hand?

Introducing his review of a biography of Billy Wilder in this week's Spectator, Philip Hensher writes, "Long long ago, they used to say that the difference between the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs was this. In Berlin, the situation was always serious, but not hopeless. In Vienna, on the other hand, the situation was invariably hopeless, but not serious."

Funny how some of these old saws can still carry a tune. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder would undoubtedly like very much like to have his fellow Germans calm down. Just last week, Der Spiegel, in a piece on the current "fin-de-siècle atmosphere" in the country, quoted Berlin philosopher Erich Hörl worrying about the "apocalyptic tone" in some of the "rhetoric of emergency" being tossed around these days. One example he might have had in mind would be former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine's assertion that with the reelection of the Social Democrats and Greens, "It is as though Heinrich Brüning has risen again -- the chancellor who caused mass unemployment -- and paved the way for Hitler."

There's no doubt that the economic situation in Germany is serious (see The Scope of the Crisis), but certainly not as hopeless as all that.

Certainly not yet. It might be a good time, though, to check up on how all that right-wing extremism that had Europe so alarmed earlier this year is faring now. When Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked Lionel Jospin out of the presidential race in April, the French poured out onto the streets to show the world how much they'd just terrified themselves and then took refuge in Jacques Chirac. At about the same time, anti-immigration maverick Pim Fortuyn was rattling Holland and rattled it even more when he was bizarrely assassinated (see Forever Young and Beautiful). For the moment, his movement seems to have dissolved in televised fist fights among those who'd hoped to take it over.

Something similar is going on in Austria now. In 1999, Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party rocked the continent by scoring 27 percent in Austrian elections and joining a governing coalition with Wolfgang Schüssel's conservative People's Party. Last Sunday, primarily because Haider is perceived to be losing his mind, that score fell to 10.2 percent and there are substantial doubts about Schüssel inviting the Freedom Party back on board. He's flirting with everyone and, as one analyst put it to the New York Times, "This will carry on one month, two months, until the serious discussions start. What you are hearing now, you can completely forget." In other words, it's hopeless, but with Schüssel's party commanding over 40 percent of the vote, not really serious.

What's important to recall is what gave rise to Le Pen, Fortuyn and Haider in the first place. In all three cases, there was a sense that the major parties in their respective countries had become moribund dinosaurs. These "men of the people" presented themselves and their charismatic personalities as regenerative forces -- and great swaths of the population responded.

Back to Germany for a moment. The conservatives have just used their majority in the upper house of parliament to block a package of "red-green" reforms. They also want to pull a rather silly PR stunt and take the government to court for lying about the state of the economy before the election even though polls show that no one believes that they weren't just as well aware of it themselves. And their would-be coalition partners, the Liberals, are racked by financial scandals, while on the left end of the spectrum, the Party for Democratic Socialism, just voted out of the government, hasn't been heard from much since.

Unless and until the government or the opposition fails to revitalize the economy and reconnect with a deeply frustrated population, things in Berlin are very serious indeed -- but not hopeless. In the meantime, though, it's not like there aren't alternatives lurking.

Elsewhere

Jürgen Habermas in The Nation on US-European relations.

Ian Buruma in The New York Review of Books on Max Beckmann, "the greatest painter to emerge from the brief but extraordinary artistic big bang of Weimar Germany." Meanwhile, The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl is enthralled by the "most exciting retrospective of the current New York art season," presenting more than 400 works by Viennese artist Dagobert Peche.

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